


Perfect 10

by emungere



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-06
Updated: 2009-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 10:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2728202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is fiction, none of it really happened. </p>
<p>Thanks to louiselux for the beta.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Perfect 10

**Author's Note:**

> This is fiction, none of it really happened. 
> 
> Thanks to louiselux for the beta.

Rafa paced.

The green room was a sort of sickly beige. There were fake flowers on the coffee table with the bagels, and someone had stuck posters to the wall with that blue tacky stuff. Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme flanked a small kitten facing down a duckling.

"I can't remember!" Rafa said.

"Regis, like king," Toni said. "Easy."

Rafa decided not to ask how Regis Philbin was like a king. That wasn't his problem anyway. "It's not him, it's--"

But then they came to get him, and he had to walk out there not knowing the co-host's name. He'd been introduced to her, more than once. It was some kind of mental block. She was a nice woman. He should remember. He was sure Roger remembered, but Roger wasn't here. Because Rafa had won the US Open, and Roger hadn't.

Regis and the woman whose name he couldn't remember shook his hand and sat him down and asked him foolish questions. That was what happened on these shows. He was supposed to be funny and witty, and he wasn't, not like Roger, so it was a good thing they could all still laugh at his poor English.

Toni kept hounding him about that, never seeming to realize that he didn't have a lot of incentive to get better. He'd never be like Roger or Andy Roddick, but at least he could spare the world more pressers like Novak's.

"Your only grandslam this year," Regis was saying. "One out of four, one out of four. That's a failing grade isn't it?"

Rafa laughed and hoped that was supposed to be funny. Everyone else laughed too. Good.

"And I understand you never got past the semi finals before this year, is that right? What changed?" Regis said. "Because I gotta tell you, we were expecting Roger again this year. We got his favorite drink and everything!"

Rafa frowned. "The pink, with the--the pineapple in it?"

He always got the biggest laughs when he wasn't trying.

"No, but seriously," Regis said. "Seriously, Rafa." He leaned in. "Do you think Roger will be mad at you for stealing his trophy? It's a pretty nice one."

"Roger, very nice guy. Besides, he steal mine too, and mine is bigger."

More laughter. Well, he'd sort of been trying for it there.

The end of the Roland Garros final played on monitors around the stage. Rafa watched as his last shot hit a good foot beyond the baseline and he watched Roger's face as the camera cut to him. It wasn't the first time he'd seen it, but Roger's expression hit him the way it always did, a deep shock in the pit of his stomach, something between heat and pain and sudden queasiness. Roger looked like he'd won the world, and he was staring straight at Rafa.

Rafa fumbled with the cap on his water bottle and took a drink. His fingers felt odd. He looked at the bands of pale skin where the tape should be.

"--plan to trade back next year?" Regis was saying. "Give him the U.S. Open and--"

Rafa waited until he was done talking, but he didn't really hear the rest of that sentence. "Roger doesn't need me to give. Roger can just--take." He saw their faces: too serious. He shrugged and smiled. "He is the best, no? Best ever."

Roger was number one again. No one would argue with him. It was a good answer. Pretty good, at least.

Rafa tried to remember the last interview he'd had where no one had mentioned Roger. He couldn't. He wasn't sure there'd ever been one.

They'd frozen Roger's moment of triumph on the monitors, split screen with his own, here in New York. Roger looked out at him as he'd looked at him then. Roger could take what he wanted. Anything he wanted. Rafa wouldn't complain.

There was sweat at the back of his neck, and his legs felt rubbery when he stood to say goodbye, like stepping into a boat on a rough sea.

Toni told him off for losing his concentration when the interview was over, but the day Toni couldn't find something to tell him off for was the day hell froze over and the clay court schedule was arranged with some kind of sense.

Next there was some photoshoot on top of the Empire State Building, just like they did with Roger last year. There was a reporter there, too, from the New York Times. Benito tried to explain something about their circulation, but Rafa couldn't grasp why people all over this country ("The world!" Benito insisted) would want to read a paper that was only about one city. He didn't really understand why people bothered with newspapers anyway when it was all online.

"Okay, now look down, yeah, through the fence, out over the city," the photographer was saying. "God, why can't they just remove one section, or put in a gate or something? No one wants fucking chain link in their photos."

"--when Federer's won it the last five years," the reporter said. "How do you feel about that?"

"I am little surprise to win, you know?" Rafa said, with a smile and a shrug. "I try my best, always."

"Do you think Federer underperformed this year?"

"I think Roger is perfect."

He heard himself say it, and then he heard everything stop, even the steady click of the camera shutter and, for an eerie second, the honk of the taxis far below.

"Ah, his form, so good!" Rafa stumbled on. "Some really brilliant shots, you know? He still number one. It is the tennis. Nothing is for sure."

Toni was going to _kill_ him.

In fact, Toni didn't say a word about it on the way back to the hotel. He didn't speak at all. Rafa wound his fingers together and grew steadily more tense until he felt he might unwind all at once and say something very stupid.

When they got up to their floor, Toni said, "That's it for today."

"Toni."

Toni unlocked his door and stopped. He spoke without looking back at Rafa. "You're not a little boy, Rafael. You don't need me to tell you this is a bad idea."

He went in and closed the door behind him.

Rafa went into his own room and flopped onto the bed. This was not good. This was so not good. Toni had never ever not yelled at him before when he screwed up. Worst of all, he didn’t know what “this” was that was such a bad idea

His phone rang to the tune of _Simply the Best._ There was only one person who had that ringtone.

"...Hello, Roger."

"Rafa." Roger sounded like he was trying not to laugh. "I just got a call from the New York Times."

"Si?"

"Mm. Si. They asked me if I'd like to comment on your quote. Perfect, Raf? Really?"

Rafa didn't know enough bad words to cover this situation. Possibly even Carlos didn't know that many bad words.

He didn't know what to say. He always knew something to say, even if it was stupid and lame, which, around Roger, it often was. This time,his throat felt weird and dry and like his voice would squeak if he could get anything out. Anything at all. His hand was sweaty where it held the phone.

"Rafa?"

"Ah," Rafa said. "Ah. Roger. I-- Toni is calling, I have to go, I'm sorry!"

He hung up. On Roger Federer. Jesus Christ.

He stuffed his head under a pillow and wondered why he'd ever thought this whole tennis thing was a good idea in the first place.

***

It wasn't too bad. The New York Times article ran the quote of course. There was a picture of Roger with the caption "Rafa says: Perfect 10!"

Rafa folded it up without reading the whole thing and ate his grapefruit slowly. Sour bursts on his tongue mixed with the sugar he'd poured on it. His eggs looked up at him. He should call Roger back. He'd been terribly rude. And also a moron. It would be the adult thing to do, and even Toni seemed to be admitting he was an adult now.

He looked at his phone and back to his eggs. They were getting cold. He should eat first. That was sensible. He took two bites and felt ill.

This was completely stupid. He hadn't said anything wrong. Maybe he'd been--overly enthusiastic. Okay. But it was _Roger_. It was _true_. He didn't have anything to be embarrassed about.

He dialed Roger's number.

"Hello?" Roger said. He sounded sleepy.

"Sorry, Roger. I wake you? I don't know where you are."

Roger yawned. "Home. Basel. It's all right. I should be awake. It's nearly noon."

"I just want to say sorry, for hang up on you last night. Ah. Sorry."

"I saw the article online earlier." Roger paused. "That quote's going to haunt you for a while."

"I know. You too. Sorry for that."

Roger laughed, low, and a little uncomfortable. "What were you thinking, Raf? Honestly. Perfect."

"Yeah. Haha."

"Nobody's perfect," Roger said.

"Right."

The talk moved on to the next tournament they'd play together and the new ATP points system and how it was working out. Roger wasn't crazy about it. He'd told Rafa why before, but Rafa didn't mind hearing it all again. Roger had a nice voice.

Rafa didn't see Roger again--not to talk to--until London and the Masters Cup. There was a party before the tournament started, with champagne cocktails Rafa was forbidden to drink on pain of lecture by Toni. There were bits of cheese on sticks and tiny pancakes with sour cream and translucent salmon roe. Rafa liked them, to his surprise, and ate so many that one of the waiters had to bring out another tray.

"Are they that good?" said Roger's nice voice, right by his ear.

Rafa spun around and got Roger in the face with a flying blob of sour cream. It landed on his nose. Roger went cross-eyed trying to look at it while Rafa tried to sink through the floor.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Jesus. Sorry."

"I surprised you." Roger wiped it off with his finger and then licked his finger clean.

Rafa stared at the wet sheen on his finger as it slid out, at the purse of his lips and the tiny glimpse of his tongue. He looked down quickly at his own shoes, quite close to Roger's. His were brown and a bit scuffed. Roger's were shiny and black and expensive. At some point, Rafa had picked up enough fashion sense to know what expensive looked like. It looked like Roger's shoes. Something in the stitching and the tapered fit, the way it hugged the outline of his bare feet, which Rafa could picture easily. Maybe they'd been custom made.

He looked back up. Roger still had a tiny dab of cream on the very tip of his nose. Rafa got it for him with a napkin.

"I think I need the champagne," he said.

Roger snagged one from a passing waiter. "What about Toni?" he asked, smiling, holding it just out of reach.

"Hey, how you know he say me no?"

Roger shrugged and handed it over. "Not a hard thing to guess." He clinked his glass against Rafa's.

"No toast?"

"To the tournament being in London instead of Shanghai."

Rafa nodded. "Hard enough to play top eight at the end of the season. Worse to fly half around the world to do it. Airplane seats too small."

Roger chuckled. "You're too large, I think. Let's move it, okay? Beginning of the season, before the Australian Open."

"Yeah, okay!" Rafa grinned and drank his champagne, and together they rearranged the tour schedule entirely. At one point, the Wimbledon final ended up on Christmas day.

"Makes sense, sort of," Roger said.

"Sort of."

Rafa went to bed that night with a head vaguely fuzzy from champagne and dreamed about Roger descending from Heaven onto Centre Court. His clothes were sparkling, blinding white. It hurt to look at him.

***

Rafa beat Andy Murray and Andy Roddick and Tsonga, and then, quite suddenly, it was time to play Roger. He had an interview the day before.

"Would you still call him perfect?" the woman asked. She smiled at him with gleaming white teeth in a way that managed to be warm and slightly predatory at the same time.

"Yes, perfect," he said, which seemed to surprise her.

"He lost his match against Simon. Again."

Rafa shrugged. "Everyone make mistakes. His game, overall, still out of this world."

"But perfect? No one's perfect, surely?"

That was what Roger had told him. Roger was probably going to have something to say about this later. Rafa kept straight on anyway. He didn't seem to be able to stop. He explained the finer details of Roger's game and went over the high points of the match he'd had with Novak. He knew he wasn't supposed to talk this way about another player. He just couldn't remember why right now. He spent a lot of time analyzing Roger's game. Why not share that with the world?

Toni was still going to kill him, obviously.

Toni didn't kill him. Again. Apparently he was only an adult when he was fucking up with the press. Or maybe even more specifically, fucking up with the press about Roger. Toni gave him this look with giant, hairy, raised eyebrows and went to get a sandwich.

Rafa went to practice. He knew where he was with tennis.

When he went into the locker room at the club to change, Roger was there. Suddenly, Rafa didn't know where he was at all.

Roger was lying on a massage table, face up. His physio was working on his left thigh. His shorts were pushed up to bare pale skin, and the physio's thumbs were really digging in. Rafa knew what that felt like, that it was about the least erotic sensation ever. The knowledge did nothing to suppress his sudden, enormous hard-on.

_Shit_. He turned away fast and worked on taping his feet up until he had some control again. He kept closing his eyes and seeing pale, slick flesh.

He hard Roger's physio say, "All right. Stay put, at least five minutes. I'll be back." And, with a slap that was probably his hand on Roger's bare thigh, he left.

The locker room filled up with the echoey silence of two people not talking and at least one of them thinking very hard about the other.

"Rafa?" Roger said.

Rafa made himself turn and smile and even get up and go over. "Hey, Roger. How are you?"

"You know." Roger scrunched his nose up and gestured to his thigh.

"Hurts?"

"It hurt less before he started in on it."

Rafa chuckled. "Yes. My mama, she say to my sister all the time when she is little: 'Il faut souffrir pour etre belle.' I always tell her Toni is much more bad than getting hair brushed and braided, but she never believe me."

Roger laughed softly. His eyes closed. "Sports massage and ice baths and hours in the hot sun, running and running and running. I suppose it does make us beautiful, in a way."

Rafa stared down at Roger's face, the curve of his lips, the glossy curls falling in a mess across his forehead. He usually got his hair cut in New York. Not this year. His cheeks were very faintly flushed.

"Our games, yes," Rafa said. "Some more beautiful than others." He shook himself. "It is bad? Your leg?"

"Not so bad, nothing to worry about. I can still play."

"Good. This is very good."

Roger opened his eyes and smiled up at him. "Do you like playing me, Rafa?"

It was so simple and direct and nothing at all like flirting. It shouldn't have made Rafa blush as much as it did. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Roger, very much I like playing you."

Roger's phone rang then, and Rafa handed it to him and went out to run in the hot sun.

Tennis took up his whole head and body, with no room left for thinking about Roger's thighs or his reaction to them or how that might relate to the five solid minutes--really a lot in TV time--he'd spent praising Roger's game. He went back to the locker room a few hours later, sweaty and pleasantly tired. The shower beat in a hot spray on his neck and shoulders and the top of his head.

When he got out, wrapped in a towel and planning to lie down and air dry for a while, he found Roger waiting for him. Rafa made some completely embarrassing noise that sounded like a wet shoe on a rubber floor.

Roger turned. "Someone typed up a full transcript of that interview and sent it to me," he said. "Helpful, you know?"

"Uh."

"I'm not sure if I should be paying you as a press agent or as a coach." Roger took a few steps closer. His hands were stuck in his pockets, and his face was unreadable. "That was a pretty thorough analysis of my game, you know? Good job."

Rafa's hair dripped down his face and neck and over his shoulders. He clutched at his towel. "Sorry?" he ventured.

Roger moved closer, and Rafa stepped back until he couldn't anymore. The pillar behind him was covered in a mosaic of blue glass tiles, slippery with steam from the shower. It was very cold against his skin.

"So here's the thing," Roger went on, as if Rafa hadn't said a word. "You're not on my payroll, Rafa. The perfect ten thing was harmless enough, but people are starting to talk. I don't know--" He stopped and rubbed at his face with both hands. He looked suddenly weary, which ought to have been better than that worrying blankness, but wasn't.

"Roger--"

"You can't say these things," Roger said. "Stop."

"But is all true."

"That's not the point! How can you think that matters? Lots of things are true that we can't say, that no one ever says, let alone says to the press. Rafa." He put his hands on Rafa's shoulders and then pulled them back quickly. The water on Rafa's skin left wet marks on his pants when he rubbed his palms on them. "You've got to stop."

Lots of true things never got said. Rafa thought about his hard-on and Roger's thighs and how small a part of his life professional tennis was going to be. He might get fifteen years, call it thirty if he counted from when he started training as a child. The men in his family lived long lives, eighty, ninety, a hundred years.

"All right," Rafa said. "I stop with the press."

Roger let out a breath that was probably relief.

"But I have to say to someone. So." Rafa put his hands on Roger's cheeks and kissed him. Roger's face was very smooth, no hint of stubble, though it was late in the day. His lips were warm and firm. He smelled like he'd showered recently, and like his own brand of aftershave, which made Rafa smile against his mouth. Other guys would do it for the money. Roger really _cared_ about his aftershave.

Rafa pulled back and leaned against the pillar. "I know you with Mirka. I know probably you don't want men kissing you, even if they are very hot men and not me. But who else do I tell this to? No one. So I have to tell you." He patted Roger's shoulder. "Okay. I go now. Please don't worry."

He went to find his clothes, feeling strangely light of heart. He hummed while he tied up his shoes, an ABBA song his mother had listened to over and over when he was a kid. She'd danced with him to it when he was barely old enough to walk and told him it was about love and war and how people's lives shine brighter in the dark, which still seemed an awful lot to read into an ABBA song.

Roger sat down beside him.

"Oh," Rafa said. He dropped his other shoe. "Hi?"

"Hi." Roger bit his lip and looked at him sideways without meeting his eyes. "Was that-- We're playing a final tomorrow."

"Yes? I would not forget." He thought a second. "Sorry, if I make your head bad for it. I do not mean to."

"It's not that."

"What is it then?"

Roger put a hand on his knee and met his eyes. He held Rafa's gaze as he leaned in until they both went crosseyed. Roger's lips touched his, and pressed, and stayed there, still for a few long seconds. Roger sat back and looked at him.

"It's crazy," Roger said.

Rafa nodded. It was totally crazy. All the lightness he'd felt vanished, sunk beneath waves of potential complications.

"But it's true," he said. And in the end, whatever happened, even if nothing happened, it would be worth it.


End file.
